SCHOOLDAYS

then look at the map and our position on it, and
consider how we have held out! That, in itself, is a
great achievement. Once we thoroughly understand
our history we must realize that nowhere in the
world can one find a greater one.

We shall always be a small minority in the world,
but, when a small nation accomplishes something
with its limited means, what it achieves has an
immense and exceptional value, like the widow's
mite. We are not inferior to any nation in the world,
and in some respects we are better, and they are
beginning to see this in foreign countries. Our small-
ness as a nation does not matter; it even has its ad-
vantages : we can know each other better, we can live
more intimately: we can feel more at home. But
it is a great thing when a small nation among great
ones does not get left behind, but takes its share
in the work of bettering humanity. We too want to
ring the bells of the world just as the villagers of
Podvorov wanted to ring the bells of Cjekovice.
This is the problem of small nations: we must
do more than the others, and be very clever; and if
anyone tries to get the better of us by force we must
not give in. Not to give in,*that is the great thingl

And if we had no Czech books, at least we had
folk-songs. We Czech boys at the Gymnasium
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